Archive of Our Own ^beta

the bus ride is maybe the worst part. 

yoonchae’s skin crawls with endless invisible insects. her glove hand twitches against her thigh in time with the music pumping through her headphones. she has to focus to relax her shoulders. there’s never been a game she’s showed up calm to. 

on the outside, she knows she’s a model for composure. she moves smoothly through warmups, doesn’t flinch during their pre-game pep talk (read: lecture slash ego-beating slash the coaches aren’t here for us, we’re here for you reminder).

when she settles behind the plate, it’s the effortless kind of motion that makes washed-up college players in the stands nod, approving and a little jealous.

but inside, her mind is clenched into a tight, unrelenting fist. the monologue running along the grooves of her brain doesn’t let up for nine whole innings, more if they’re unlucky. 

too slow on the dive, quicker on the return, more accuracy to second, not too high, lexie might miss it. smile at megan. don’t glare. deep breaths. tighten your shinguard. breathe—

before any of that can happen, though, she usually has to sit through a nerve-fraying bus ride packed with rowdy, excited girls. speakers thump hype music from the back seats. someone screams over something on someone else’s phone.

at yoonchae’s side, even sophia is thrumming with pre-game energy. she keeps twisting to talk to dani and manon behind them, propping her chin on the back of her seat. 

yoonchae rests her head against the window, feeling the vibrations of the engine through the glass, humming right into her skull. it’s kind of soothing.

through the crack between the seat ahead of her and the window, she can see faded pink glowing in the mid-afternoon sun. it doesn’t exactly make the tightness in her chest dissipate, but it makes something spiky rolling around in there freeze up. 

she knows that however nervous she is about the upcoming game, megan is about eight times more so. they do nervous differently, according to sophia. 

“you get all, like, ghosty. you know? like quiet and slow and stuff.” 

the unhelpful part: she refuses to elaborate on how exactly megan does nervous different. 

yoonchae thinks she could probably figure it out for herself, if she spent enough time thinking about it. 

she reaches one finger out, threading her had through the gap, and pokes gently at the mass of pink-brown-pink. it shifts and megan’s head pops up over the back of the seat, eyes narrowed. 

“hands off,” she snaps. 

there’s one reason she doesn’t spend very much time thinking about it. 

she forces a smile up at megan. 

“sorry. just making sure you were okay,” she says, quiet. 

megan’s face goes to war with itself for a long moment, a tiny, barely contained battle that yoonchae finds herself looking at a lot, before it relaxes into something much calmer. more open. 

“i’m fine,” she murmurs. “don’t poke me next time, okay?”

before she sits back down, she reaches out and carefully brushes a strand of hair off of yoonchae’s cheek, and, well. 

there’s the other reason she doesn’t spend very much time thinking about all the ways in which her and megan might be different and the same. 

the first pitch tips over the top of her glove, smacking off the front of her helmet with a resounding clang. her knees hit the dirt, practiced, hands scrambling for the ball before the girl on second can make a break for third. she can feel sophia’s eyes on her from down the baseline, waiting. 

“ball, jeung!” sohey hollers from somewhere behind her. 

her fingers close around leather and thin stitching after a few too many seconds, nails scraping against the dirt. 

“go three!” lara cries. 

yoonchae obeys, spinning on one knee and firing the ball blindly up the baseline to sophia, praying that years of muscle memory will keep the throw on target. she rips off her helmet, ignoring son’s voice in the back of her mind (keep your head on, jeung, unless it’s in the air), watching as a cloud of dust rises up around third.

she can’t see sophia or the other player. the whole field holds its breath, muscles tense, metal digging into the dirt. she can feel megan’s anxiety radiating from the pitcher’s mound, waiting to see if their—her—slip up will cost them a base. the runner on first feints a break for second, but no one moves. 

the umpire shifts. 

“safe!” 

a groan rises from behind the fence and someone’s bat clatters furiously against the floor of the dugout. from the stands, yoonchae can hear a few indignant parents yelling vague insults at the umpire. he doesn’t flinch. 

megan’s face shutters, and she turns to the outfield before yoonchae can even try to lift the corners of her mouth into an encouraging smile. 

and, well. the show must go on. play ball. 

she tugs her helmet back on and settles back into her crouch behind the plate. the batter steps into the box, cleats divoting the dirt again. 

megan gets the ball from sophia, readying herself on the rubber. yoonchae can practically feel the full-body deep breath the pitcher takes. her cap is tipped low over her eyes. 

yoonchae has never understood how megan can see with the brim tilted like that. 

she’s never understood a lot of things about megan. why she plays with her hair down, for instance, pink strands whipping as she winds up for each pitch. why she has her middle name across the back of her jersey instead of skiendiel, even though everyone calls her that anyway. 

more pertinently, yoonchae doesn’t understand why megan keeps insisting her screwball is her best pitch.

she signals for a fastball and gets a minute shake of the head in reply. the set of megan’s jaw says—no. screwball until i get it right. 

yoonchae shifts to the side, just a little as megan starts her windup, moving her glove to the edge of the plate. the ball comes in faster than a screwball should, and yoonchae barely has time to correct before it barrels right into the center of her chest. 

her requested fastball slams neatly into the pocket of her glove and takes her breath along with it. her effort to frame the ball meant that the batter’s swing had just about clipped the front of her mask, which is something yoonchae doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to. 

“strike!” 

the whole infield exhales, and yoonchae gets to her feet to walk the ball back to the plate. megan’s brow furrows as she approaches, crossing her arms over her chest. 

“what?” yoonchae tries to hand the ball back, but megan doesn’t move. “are you okay?”

megan has been pitching wild for two innings now and if yoonchae’s learned their coaches game strategy as well as she thinks she has, they won’t take megan out until she starts hitting batters. 

“i’m fine.”

megan kind of spits the words at her, pointed and sharp. yoonchae takes a step back, fighting not to let her eyes slide over to sophia at third. help. she’s being weird again. 

the pitcher’s stormy expression flickers and she reaches out, rubbing her palm against the side of yoonchae’s helmet. it comes away dirty and she wipes it on her pants. 

she accepts the ball when yoonchae offers it and they separate without confirming the next pitch together. yoonchae’s pretty sure megan is going to do whatever she wants regardless of what she thinks. 

sophia’s eyes are white-hot as yoonchae takes her position again. for a third-baseman, she acts like she has the field vision of a centerfielder. yoonchae doesn’t look at her. she needs to focus on megan. sometimes, she can tell where the ball is going to end up before megan even lets go of it. 

it comes in slow, low, and inside. the batter doesn’t even try for it. 

“strike!” 

protests erupt from the stands again, this time from the other side. one ball, two strikes. two outs. 

she feels a little less like their chances of winning the game are slipping away when megan doesn’t pause to take a deep breath on her next windup. she gets a smooth fastball, dipping too low at the very last second to be tipped by the end of the bat. umpire’s call and they’re moving, filing off the field and swapping fielding gloves for batting ones. manon is out on the field waiting before the opposing team’s pitcher is even on the mound. 

“we need to load the bases,” sohey tells her through the fence. manon is a power hitter, which yoonchae is jealous of until it comes to moments like these. we're counting on you’s and expectations of consistency. “go easy, just get to first or second.” 

megan is a righty, but she’s still their team's best slap hitter. she’s nowhere near being up in the lineup, though, sitting hunched in on herself at the very end of the bench. she still has her glove on. lara squeezes her shoulder as she passes, helmet dangling from one hand. 

“need help with your gear?” lara asks as she approaches yoonchae. 

“i don’t think i’ll need it off,” she admits lowly. she’s six people away from batting, and she’s seen the other team’s infield work. she’s not confident they’ll even make it past their fourth batter. 

“don’t be so pessimistic,” the outfielder chides gently. “at least take your chest protector off.”

“i’m not pessimistic.”

she doesn’t take the chest protector off and ends up having to scramble to get out of her gear when she sees dani stepping up to the plate, cramming her helmet down over her head and taking a few hurried practice swings out beside the dugout. son, perched on a bucket of balls by the field entrance, gives her a look. 

he’s the quietest head coach yoonchae has ever had. 

his eyes are loud, though. i thought we trained you better than this. 

yoonchae looks away, quick. 

you also paired me with megan skiendiel. what did you think was going to happen?

when yoonchae was five, she got a tiny aluminum bat for her birthday. on her first test swing in the yard, she smacked a full-size baseball off the child-sized tee right into her dad’s face.

her mom had yelped, barely contained as she scrambled forward to examine him, but through her worried fingers, yoonchae could see her dad’s glowing grin. he gently pushed her mom away, shaking his head. one side of his glasses dangled awkwardly from his ear. 

“그녀는 타고난 재능을 지녔다!” 

his hands, warm over her own. 

“다시 한번, 윤채아,” he murmured, encouraging. 

her mom, arms folded as she watched. her older sister, giggling quietly at her side. her dad made sure to step out of the way. her second swing proved just as prodigal as the first. 

she doesn’t really remember any of this. her older sister would remind her every time she pouted a little too hard about going to practice. 

“he just wants the best for you,” she explained, over and over. 

“i think he just wants me to be the best,” yoonchae grumbled. 

for years, most of her shirts were stained with grass and dirt. stubborn patches that wouldn’t come off in the wash, no matter how hard her mom tried. by the time she was twelve, she had already been in and out of physical therapy offices more times than she’d been to the orthodontist. 

“isn’t that the same thing?” 

they win their game. it’s becoming less and less of an option for them to lose. they’re stubborn. 

it makes their post-game chat shorter, which yoonchae is grateful for. they’ll get their full critiques at practice tomorrow, but she’s just glad she gets to take her gear off a little sooner. she’s pretty sure her entire jersey is a shade darker than it’s supposed to be, saturated with salt and sweat. 

as she’s unstrapping her left leg, long fingers close around the buckles on her right shin. megan makes quick work of the shinguard, putting it right into yoonchae’s gear bag instead of handing it to her when she’s done. 

“you should get knee savers,” she says softly. 

her hand ghosts over yoonchae’s leg, warm through the layers of fabric, and it doesn’t take nearly as much effort as it used to not to flinch away. weirdly, she kind of wants to lean closer. 

“that’s cheating,” she replies, slotting her other shinguard in. 

she’s seen plenty of other catchers with foam pads hooked to the backs of their shins—something to rest against between pitches, something to keep the knees going for a few extra years. 

“i just don’t think you need to work quite so hard.” 

megan’s concern comes out like critique. it has taken yoonchae one full season of collegiate baseball to learn this. her first few games catching for megan—one year older and so much bolder—she’d heard every other word out of megan’s mouth as judgement. 

“less power on the return, yoonchae. you’ll throw your arm out.”

“i wouldn’t be as good otherwise.”

yoonchae isn’t naive. megan might have been recruited young—the star pitcher of her high school team, and brought up to the next level a year sooner than everyone else—but yoonchae was recruited younger. she finished high school on a laptop during summer conditioning, taking her place behind the plate as a baby-faced college freshman without a driver’s license. 

so. megan might be good, but yoonchae might be even better. 

“don’t get a big head,” megan scoffs, pushing at yoonchae’s shoulder as she stalks away. 

when yoonchae gets around to packing her normal gear bag, she finds her bats already slotted into the pockets—preferred on the right, backup on the left, just how she likes it. her fielding glove is tucked inside her batting helmet, resting on top of the dusty child-sized pink wilson she carries around for good luck. 

when she looks up, megan is already staring at her. the pitcher’s eyes slide off of hers the second they meet, breaking into a smile as she waves at someone behind yoonchae. 

“adela! sit with me!” 

yoonchae finds a seat on the bus next to sophia and brushes a hand over the dirt stains on the older girl’s jersey. their old, rickety washing machine might not be able to stand up to them.

“i’m going to have to put it in with everyone else’s,” sophia says forlornly, because she always seems to know exactly what yoonchae is thinking. she’s the only player who gets away with sneaking her uniform off to be washed at home. everyone else has to put up with shrunken practice uniforms and the foul stench of whatever industrial detergent gets used to bleach the dirt off their mostly-white sets. 

“we’ll all smell the same,” yoonchae nods. 

it makes sophia laugh, which eases some of the growing tension in yoonchae’s chest, but then megan lets her water bottle smack against yoonchae’s shoulder as she shuffles past, which makes everything feel tight again. 

“don’t let her get to you,” dani instructs, hooking her chin over the back of sophia’s seat from behind them. “she’s probably just frustrated with her pitching today.” 

“that’s not exactly an excuse,” sophia grumbles. 

dani hums, twirling sophia’s ponytail around a finger. she reaches for the elastic. 

“can i braid this?” 

yoonchae offers to switch seats and ends up alone in the row behind sophia and dani, trying not to listen to their giggles and whispers. 

she plugs her headphones into her phone and turns the music up a few notches louder than usual as the bus starts moving. son is saying something, but she’s pretty sure she knows what it is. 

rest up, fuel up, and be ready for practice tomorrow. come early if you need to see the trainers. blah blah teamwork blah blah improvement. 

she shuts her eyes and rests her head against the window. 

she can still feel the dirt caked under her nails from the game. it makes her whole body itch, but there’s nothing she can do except wait. 

megan’s laughter echoes from the back of the bus, curling under the collar of yoonchae’s still-damp jersey. she shivers. she should have changed. 

“no, because, like—”

she presses her hands down over the cups of her headphones, willing megan’s voice to fade into the background of her music. it works. 

“—he’s texting me again—”

sort of. 

“no, yeah, it’s good.” 

“no, yeah?” her sister repeats in her ear, teasing. 

“i—” yoonchae scrapes a hand over her face. her patience is a short rope these days, even for the people she loves the most. “i just meant yes. yes, things are good.”

“baseball is good?”

“no.” she just wants to hear how it it’ll sound if she tells the truth. “yeah.”

her sister laughs, staticky through the phone. she thinks yoonchae is joking. 

“we’re looking forward to summer.”

she gets to go home for four weeks. the rest will be spent in pre-season training. she will not complain about this because all that training is paying for her tuition, among other things, but she’s not not upset about her halved summer break. 

“me too,” she gets out. 

the framed photo she used to keep of her family has been face down since midterms of her first semester. 

“i miss you guys.”

“be brave, yoonchae,” reminds her sister like, for whatever reason, to say i miss you too would be admitting some kind of defeat. “i’ll call you again soon.”

she hangs up before yoonchae can manage anything else, like how are you and how is mom and does dad still talk about his broken glasses?

megan and her have matching backpacks. their last names and jersey numbers are embroidered just below the adidas logo. and everyone on the team has them. they’re not, like, special or anything. 

personally, yoonchae prefers reebok.

they get adidas for free, though, and megan is always saying how good she looks in their warmup shorts. so. adidas is fine. it’s passable, and definitely doesn’t make yoonchae’s stomach do anything weird when she sees the waistband of their tri-striped shorts rolled twice at megan’s hips. 

it’s sort of out of spite, or something, that she doesn’t ever wear adidas to class, except on her feet, because she and sophia have matching shoes and she kind of likes that. it’s definitely out of spite that she keeps using the team issued backpack after most of the other freshman have moved on to their normal backpacks, because sophia giggled when she pointed out that her and megan were the only ones still using them.

they have more classes together than yoonchae could have ever predicted based on their majors, and she doesn’t spend any time thinking about that. none at all. 

“i hate this professor,” megan murmurs under her breath, leaning into yoonchae’s space. 

she drops her head onto yoonchae’s shoulder after a beat, squinting at her laptop screen. all of the notes are in korean. 

“me too,” yoonchae whispers after a few too many seconds. she’s been late to stuff like that a lot recently. too slow on the ball, too slow around the bases during warmups, too slow on the uptake. 

megan shifts, pulling away, and it’s the same feeling yoonchae gets when clouds pass over the sun. she bites at the inside of her cheek and types into her notes document—in english—make grocery list for tuesday. 

perks of living off campus with a junior: no dining hall food ever. 

she’s subjected instead to endless cycles of meal prep—overnight oats, beef and rice, yogurt bowls, chicken and rice, turkey and rice, mango and sticky rice for dessert. whatever. she likes rice. and sophia somehow manages to make their nutrition plan restrictions taste good. 

“i miss normal food,” yoonchae had grumbled once, pushing a hunk of barely seasoned chicken around her plate disinterestedly. sophia had laughed from her place at the sink, doing the dishes that yoonchae was supposed to do—instead, she had managed to slice her finger open on the single knife in the whole sink basin and got blood all over their nice kitchen towel trying to fix it up herself. 

she ended up seated on top of the counter like a kid as sophia held a gauze pad against the cut and wrapped a princess bandaid around her finger, pressing her lips chastely to cinderella’s face when she was done. 

“we can get you some jjajangmyeon when the season’s over,” she had promised. “but only if you finish your food.” 

“i’m not five.”

“stop acting like it, then.” 

“will you send me your notes?” megan asks, distracting yoonchae from her rice chicken rice broccoli daydream.

“you can’t read korean,” she says. 

she doesn’t need to turn to see the expression that contorts megan’s face. she’s seen it a million times before. she gets it when she signals for a curveball and megan thinks they should go with a fastball. it makes an appearance when yoonchae gets bulldozed by someone twice her size at the plate, and reaches out to sophia to help her up instead of megan. 

“i could use google translate.” 

“i’ll translate,” yoonchae hums, shaking her head. “i need practice.” 

which is sort of true. it’s mostly not, though. what she needs is to go home. 

she needs her mom’s cooking and about fourteen fewer assignments in her calendar than she does, and a shower so long that she feels dizzy when she steps out of it. but her mom is halfway across the world, they’re only a third of the way through the semester, and she doesn’t have a job to help foot the water bill for her and sophia’s apartment. 

her showers at home are as quick as they are in the locker room. in and out, eyes on the floor. 

“what makes you say that? did someone say something about your english?” megan asks, shoulders stiffening.

yoonchae also needs to stop sitting next to megan in lecture. she can’t focus with the girl beside her. her notes won’t be any use to either of them at this point. 

“no,” yoonchae says firmly, bending over her computer. 

during a game at the beginning of the season, she tripped over the word first, accent rounding out the consonants. dani, go to first! fumbled awkwardly out of her mouth, but she thought nothing of it. everyone on the team knew what she meant. the play went smoothly, and so what if it made a few of the girls on the opposing team snicker behind the fence?

so, what: one inning later, megan sent a pitch at a batter’s thigh so fast that the girl crumpled to the ground clutching her leg. yoonchae had dashed to the mound, convinced megan was going to break down on the field. the last time she hit a girl with a pitch she’d cried not once, not twice, but four times over the mistake. 

instead, she was met with a shrug and cold fingers prying the ball out of hers.

“she said something,” megan explained vaguely, expression hard. “don’t worry about it.” 

“you can’t hit people just because they’re mean.”

yoonchae is a good guesser. it comes with the position. 

“it was an accident,” megan said. her own personal don’t worry about it.

she followed it up with a ball right into the center of yoonchae’s chest, which was confusing, and probably intentional, and stung a whole lot more than some random girl’s jab at her accent. 

now, megan nudges yoonchae’s shoulder, ever insistent. she ignores it, trying to focus on the professor some twenty rows in front of them. he’s moving through slides quickly. they must be talking about something important, maybe, or something not important at all. 

“seriously, chae,” she urges. “you can tell me.” 

“don’t call me that,” she bites back, even as she catches herself leaning into megan’s touch. she pulls away and tries to glare. “and don’t worry about it.”

she doesn’t make an effort to watch her tone, and when class is over, megan is out of the room before yoonchae can even close her laptop. 

a text lights up her phone screen as she’s zipping up her jacket, awkwardly shuffling around in the aisle so that impatient upperclassmen can squeeze around her. 

sometimes, if she’s not wearing any of her team-branded clothing, people think she’s a high schooler here for extra credits. this never seems to happen to megan, even though they’re both younger than pretty much every single other person in their graduating class. 

so, what? 

[megan meiyok] i got us a table in the lounge

[megan meiyok] meet me for lunch? :) 

yoonchae thinks you could have just waited.

she types okay and sets a reminder for herself to send megan her translated class notes. 

the air outside is biting and she tries not to snap at iliya when the older girl yanks on her backpack playfully as she passes. 

she texts megan without hesitating. 

[yoonchae!] I have someone you can hit at practice.

it takes less than a minute to get a response.

[megan meiyok] i dont do that  

[megan meiyok] who is it

and maybe iliya walks off the field with a ball-shaped bruise on her thigh. maybe megan apologizes and means it, but yoonchae isn’t entirely sure. 

she feels guiltier than she expected about it all, and leaves a powerade in iliya’s locker as some kind of apology. 

sophia catches her doing it, and doesn’t say anything, but her brows lift and she digs her elbow into dani’s side, which is almost more embarrassing than just being caught leaving stuff in people’s lockers in the first place. 

dani smirks at her as she passes, and yoonchae slams iliya’s locker shut, gone from the locker room before the metal has stopped ringing. 

yoonchae listens to lara’s music sometimes. 

she listens to everyone’s music when it blares from their absurdly oversized speaker-on-wheels at practice and during workouts, but lara made a playlist just for yoonchae within days of meeting her. 

“it’s just stuff i like, babe. if you don’t, that’s okay!” 

“i like lots of music.”

on the rare occasion that she’s not flanked by other members of the team on her walk to class, she listens to lara’s playlist and writes all her thoughts about the songs in her notes app. 

californication = bad thing?

kaytranada 8.5/10 (sorry lara)

play boy playboi carti is superhero music 

ask for more deftones songs 

megan sends her music too, sometimes. she listens to a lot of the same artists as lara. yoonchae knows this because every time lara gets to pick the music during warmups, megan bounces excitedly on her toes. 

“wait, i love this song!”

but none of the names she sees on lara’s playlist ever pop up in her and megan’s text chains. she sends yoonchae gentle, lilting songs with titles like marigolds and waiting and maybe, baby. nothing like the bass-driven, mouth-curling music that bleeds too-loud from her headphones before a game. 

each one gets funneled into a playlist yoonchae has titled what do it mean. 

just because that was the first song megan ever sent her, two weeks into their first semester of college, and for no other reason whatsoever. 

when she gets sick of other people’s music in her ears, she goes back to the familiar sounds of her favorite bands and tries to keep her thumbs from sending them off to megan. she likes to keep these kinds of things close to her chest. no one else needs to know what her late-night tears sound like. 

she caves, once, during one of these moonlight mourning sessions. she sends megan homesick by a band that’s old and familiar. it’s one of those songs that sticks uncomfortably in her throat, and she barely has the restraint not to type that out too. 

she powers her entire phone off immediately after, burying her face in her pillow and trying not to think too hard about the fact that her and sophia’s apartment is so much quieter at night than her family’s home in seoul. 

the next morning, she misses three alarms and is ushered up and out of bed by a frantic sophia a mere fifteen minutes before practice starts. 

they’re late, because of course they are, but sohey doesn’t say anything because yoonchae is with sophia, and sophia is a strange kind of untouchable in the eyes of their coaches. megan’s eyes catch over her own and yoonchae remembers—very suddenly, when megan’s expression softens into something that makes her ironclad knees a little weak—an un-captioned spotify link turning blue. 

“i have something for you later,” megan whispers as she helps yoonchae load plates onto a bar for manon’s squats. 

something turns out to be a slightly sweaty hug that smells like megan’s perfume and leaves yoonchae feeling a little dizzy. by the time she manages to get her stiff arms to move (to reciprocate, or push her away, or something), megan is already pulling away again, blowing her a kiss as she disappears into the locker room. 

yoonchae is left standing a little dumbly in the mess of dumbbells and kettlebells that the upperclassmen didn’t bother to put away. 

“jeung, clean up, please,” their trainer instructs as he walks past. 

“okay.” 

every time she bends to pick up another weight, she gets a whiff of perfume, and decides she’s probably just imagining things. 

two days before they leave for a weekend tournament in florida, her academic advisor asks her to make a five year plan. 

“you don’t have to do it right now. just get it to me before the end of the semester, okay?”

it’s been three weeks and yoonchae still hasn’t touched the document. she’s not even sure she has a five day plan. every day feels like the same kind of whirlwind—practice, beef-rice-broccoli, texts from megan, class, think about megan, homework, blah blah baseball, baseball, repeat. 

or something. 

maybe less of the megan. or more. she’s never really sure. 

“what are you going to do?” she asks sophia over dinner, poking disinterestedly at her salmon. 

“i have an internship at a pretty good firm lined up for the summer,” sophia explains, nudging yoonchae’s untouched glass of electrolyte solution closer to her. “if it goes well, i might be able to get a job there.”

sophia is pre-law, except yoonchae’s pretty sure her roommate could pass the bar like, right now. she’s never seen someone study so much. sophia studies in a way that looks clean, though. she’s almost always in bed by eleven. yoonchae’s never heard her crying over an essay that just wouldn’t write itself. 

she’s old enough to know that doesn't mean it doesn’t happen, and young enough to be jealous of the fact that sophia seems so untouchable. she wants to come across that way too, but she’s not sure she’s been successful. not to sophia at least.

“oh. that’s cool,” she nods. 

she sips slowly and shudders a little. they’re at the bottom of their bag of electrolyte powder packets, which means they only have lemon-lime left, and that’s always been her least favorite. 

“why do you ask?”

she considers not telling sophia about the five year plan thing, but the older girl would probably find out anyway. maybe in two months when yoonchae freaks out over not having it done or in two days when it ends up spilling over during dinner anyway. 

“my advisor wants me to do this five year plan,” she explains. “i’m just looking for ideas.”

sophia nods, chewing slowly. 

“you know, i guess i kind of always thought you’d just play baseball forever,” she hums. 

yoonchae’s stomach turns over and she pokes at her salmon again, watching the tines of her fork sink into the flaking meat. 

she knows sophia didn’t mean it any kind of way, but it feels a little prophetic, in a terrible, apocalyptic kind of way. which shouldn’t be the case. yoonchae likes baseball. she’s good at baseball. 

she’s pretty sure it’s not supposed to make her feel sick to imagine playing it forever.

nothing is as bad as summer training in california, but it’s still unseasonably hot for spring in florida, and yoonchae is beginning to think she might melt into a puddle before this game is over. she’s not used to whatever wet heat means, and how exactly that’s different from dry heat. 

they’re playing a low-stakes knockout tournament for practice before the season really kicks into gear, but low-stakes doesn’t mean low-effort in son’s book. 

supposedly, katseye has three catchers, but neither dani nor nayoung even bring their gear with them to games anymore. if megan isn’t pitching, sophia is, but either way, yoonchae is behind the plate. 

sweat drops off her nose, landing square on her lip as the next pitch comes in. it’s a little distracting, but it doesn’t matter, because the batter swings and makes contact, sending the ball sailing into the outfield. lara spins on a heel and takes off. yoonchae steps out in front of the plate, kicking the discarded bat aside as she watches, waiting. 

the other team had one player on first, who is now rounding second, clearly aiming for a run. yoonchae wants to scoff. the team’s third base coach is urging the runner on, but lara leaps forward, stretching out, and the balls neatly in the pocket of her glove. 

megan lets out a whoop and yoonchae takes the chance to rip her helmet off and take in a full breath of air. lara sends the ball rocketing to second, and lexie turns to fire it at first. 

“slow!” yoonchae shouts. 

the runner has already given up, jogging defeatedly back to first, and lexie lobs the ball gently to manon, who steps delicately on the base. 

sohey likes when they try to tag runners, but son prefers bases. yoonchae knows it’s because he’s seen dani do the splits midair to avoid a tag before. their shortstop is one of the most creative baserunners yoonchae has ever seen, and knows the rulebook inside and out. umpires aren’t her biggest fans.  

manon ends the play by walking the ball back to megan, and yoonchae turns to grab a swig of water from the plastic squeeze bottle tucked by the edge of the backstop. she wipes at her sweaty face once more, surely leaving streaks of dirt behind as she does, and crams her still-damp helmet back onto her head. immediately, she starts feeling the heat again. 

one more out. than she can take some of this shit off and get out of the sun. 

“you okay, catch?” the umpire asks gruffly when she wobbles a little getting back into position. 

“yes, sir,” she replies, polite more than anything else. “thank you.”

he hums, waiting until her cleats are steady in the dirt before nodding at the next batter. yoonchae ends up having to scoot back as the girl takes her stance in the box, one cleat so close to the back white line that yoonchae considers making a fuss about it. 

on the mound, megan’s eyes narrow, and she waits for yoonchae—for once—to signal the next pitch. fast, low, inside. 

pink whips and the ball comes in blazing. yoonchae shifts, framing what might just barely qualify for a strike if she can keep her chest centered—not that it matters, though, because the batter takes a swing anyway. she steps back to adjust, cutting low at the ball, which would be fine if that didn’t mean the tip of her bat catching the edge of yoonchae’s mask on her follow-through.

she feels her chin jerk to the side and the ball slam into her shin, which still hurts, even through layers of plastic and padding, and lets out the tiniest yelp, mostly for the umpire’s sake, just so he knows that she’s been clipped and isn’t just being a baby. 

her own name reaches her ears, shouted in megan’s cracking-with-concern voice, and she tries to reorient herself. the ball technically isn’t dead yet. she’s pretty sure it didn’t hit the plate and it definitely didn’t hit the bat. 

she scrabbles for a hold on the ball, already annoyed about the dirt under her nails, but something smacks gently against the back of her helmet. 

“hey, hey, stop,” megan’s voice comes from much closer this time, and yoonchae feels fingers slipping up under her mask, guiding the helmet off her head. hair sticks to the side of her face, tacky with sweat and dirt. megan tucks it behind her ear carefully. “timeout.”

“i’m fine,” yoonchae says instinctively, blinking. 

she’s a little dizzy, but it’s more from the heat than anything else. nothing to do with megan’s hands ghosting across her skin. she already feels a little better with the helmet off. over megan’s shoulder she can see grant and sohey approaching and resists the urge to groan. 

grant peers at her in the way that means he’s checking for a concussion and sohey is examining her helmet for scuff marks. 

the player from the other team is watching from a few paces away, looking mildly stricken as her own coach says something to her in a low hiss. 

“i’m really fine,” she tries to repeat, shifting her face away from megan’s palm. despite the warm day, megan’s hands are cool, which actually feels nice against her skin, but yoonchae just wants to get this inning over with so she can sit down without squatting. her legs are killing her. 

“he better not call interference,” megan grumbles, glaring over her shoulder at the batter. 

“it was an accident,” yoonchae whispers, flicking a finger out at the brim of megan’s too-low cap. “it was just the backswing.” 

“still,” megan shakes her head. “you feeling okay?”

it’s the kind of question their trainer should be asking, but for some reason, when it comes to yoonchae, grant tends to let the girls hover over her before he steps in. the time someone cleated her at home, he nodded at sophia to calm yoonchae down before he stepped in with his gauze. when she was running the bases and collided headfirst with the shortstop, grant allowed missy, who was base coaching at third, to help her up and walk her through a quick injury assessment. 

“it’s hot out here,” yoonchae admits, because her dizziness hasn’t really subsided much and megan is looking at her so kindly. 

“yeah, i bet,” megan nods, frowning. she tugs a little at yoonchae’s chest protector.  “we’re almost done. do you wanna swap with dani?”

their shortstop is already five steps closer to the dugout than she’d been a minute ago, waiting for the signal that she needs to get gear on. 

“that’ll take too long.”

yoonchae is already hyper-aware of son’s eyes on them from behind the fence. hurry it up ladies. she shakes her head at dani and watches the shortstop exchange a look with sophia before taking her position again.

grant makes her walk in a straight line and spin in a slow circle before he lets her put her helmet back on, and yoonchae apologizes to the mortified looking batter as she settles back into her stance. 

“god, no, i’m sorry,” the girl whispers back. “my coach is furious.”

“it’s no big deal,” yoonchae reassures, but she inches a little further from the plate anyway. 

rattled, the batter swings unsuccessfully at two more rough pitches and yoonchae stumbles to her feet as people file off the field. megan’s arm winds around her waist before she knows what’s happening, and they walk into the dugout together. yoonchae maybe leans on megan a little more than she walks strictly with her.

“off,” megan instructs, tugging at the chest strap of her gear once yoonchae is perched on the bench.

“sorry?” her cheeks flush pink and she’s suddenly glad for the heat of the day. 

“take your gear off.” megan is rolling her eyes and sinking to her knees—which makes yoonchae’s stomach flip a little for no reason whatsoever—to unbuckle her shin guards.

she lets megan help her out of the rest of her gear and avoids lara’s skeptical, knowing look when she passes by with her bat over one shoulder. she avoids sophia’s gentle, probing questions about her water intake and whether or not the world is still spinning, and tries to breathe slowly without watching the way megan contorts herself into warmup stretches. 

she’s here to play baseball. 

not stare at her pitcher. at least, not outside the diamond. 

she grits her teeth and stands, walking up to the fence to watch as lexie steps up to bat. this is what good players do. they watch the game and take notes and don’t get distracted in the middle of the inning by pink-haired pitchers with something to prove.

sometimes megan sends her long, winding text messages that yoonchae thinks were maybe meant for someone else. 

this is how she learns about megan’s mom—she did everything she could, but we’re just really different—and how she picked baseball over dancing in junior high. 

"i was better at dancing. i don’t know. i thought could get as good at baseball because i liked it more. how did you get good at baseball? or were you just born good? i feel like it’s probably that one. i don’t know." 

yoonchae asks for sophia’s help with a lot of things, but drafting responses to these messages will never be one of them.

“i hit my dad in the face with a ball,” she tells megan, once, instead of texting it. 

they’re in a thrift store, staring at a rack of overlarge shirts. megan tugs at one of them, and the metal hanger scrapes over the rack, screeching. 

“what?”

“when i was kid,” she continues, “i hit him in the face and he got so excited that he signed me up for tee ball the very next day.” 

megan’s mouth curves upward at the corners. “he was happy you hit him?”

“he was happy i was good at something.” 

she examines the print on a navy blue shirt. red sox. world series winners, 2007. the same year yoonchae was born. the cardinals won the year megan was born. vaguely, she wonders if megan knows that. 

“i never did anything else,” she explains, instead of informing megan about the cardinals, because she’s not sure the other girl would take that one very well. she’s a dodgers fan first, and a yankees fan second. “just baseball.”

megan hums. sometimes, yoonchae gets the sense that her words slip right out of megan’s head the second she says them. 

“i danced,” megan says, like she hasn’t already admitted this. she looks up from the shirts, studying the side of yoonchae’s face. “i was better at that than i am at baseball.”

she pulls something off the rack, and holds it up in front of yoonchae. 

“you’d look so good in this.” 

it’s white, and small. it looks like it would hug yoonchae’s shoulders in a way that would make her nervous to stretch her arms too far over her head. she takes it anyway, eyeing the little booths at the back of the store with curtains drawn over them. 

“i think you’re very good at baseball,” is what comes out instead of thank you or i’ll give it a try or no, it would look better on you. 

it’s probably the best thing she could’ve said, though, because megan grins brightly and loops an arm around her waist. she guides yoonchae to the back of the store and steps into the changing room behind her, sliding a hand over her eyes and turning away before yoonchae can protest. 

“just tell me when you’re ready. i wanna see it,” megan tells the curtain. 

yoonchae changes obediently, draping her jacket and shirt over megan’s shoulder because there’s no where else to put them except the floor, and sighs when she’s done. megan seems to know exactly what that means and turns around, already grinning. 

“i knew it.” she reaches out and pats at one of yoonchae’s biceps. “you look great.”

she points at the mirror and yoonchae pivots. it doesn’t look terrible. she looks strong. not like she plays a sport and trains nine times a week. more like she wakes up every morning and stares herself in the eye as she brushes her teeth. like she reaches out a hand to shake whenever she meets someone new and doesn’t fumble over introductions. 

“it’s not bad,” she murmurs, tugging at the hem a little. 

megan’s fingers brush against her hip as she hunts for a price tag, and yoonchae tries to meet her own eyes in the mirror. she only gets as far as her nose before megan is standing up in front of her, blocking her view. 

“only seven bucks,” she nods. “you should get it.” 

she only has a five in her wallet and megan doesn’t blink before forking over her credit card, shrugging off yoonchae’s promise of paying her back. 

“just wear the shirt, yeah?”

she doesn’t even wink or anything when she says it, which is how yoonchae knows she really means it means it.

catchers, as a general rule, are meant to be a little bulky. 

yoonchae, as a general fact, isn’t especially bulky. she’s tall and strong and sturdy when she needs to be, but the real advantage she has over any of the recruits their coaches are looking at is that she’s fast.

she’s quick to the ball, quick around the bases, quick to a decision in the heat of a moment. 

most of the time. 

lately, she’s been a little slower. she’s not the first one to cross the line during warmups at practice and manon’s jokes as they jog bases land a second later than they’re supposed to. 

sophia tells her this is fine. that it’s just part of adjusting. 

“you’ve got a lot going on, yoonchip. don’t stress about it too much.” 

she’s not stressed, exactly, but she isn’t a fan of this newish-old development. especially not when megan starts noticing it. 

“you gotta speed up your reset,” the pitcher calls from the mound in the middle of practice. “just saying.”

yoonchae doesn’t even need to look to know that sohey is nodding his head behind her. 

she wants to toss her glove down and storm off the field, a little bit. she doesn’t enjoy being critiqued by her teammate in front of everyone. especially not right after megan had just hucked three consecutive pitches into the dirt and she’d had to lay out for two of them. now her practice uniform is totally wrecked. 

she won’t storm off, or anything, but she takes her time settling back into her stance. just to spite megan. and maybe because the entire right side of her body kind of aches. but mostly out of spite. 

megan’s eyes narrow, and the next pitch smacks into her glove so hard that yoonchae feels the sting in her elbow.

the five year plan isn’t coming along so well. it’s not coming along at all, really. 

she finds herself crammed against the wall of a tiny nepalese restaurant in town with lara across from her, poring over a menu that can’t have more than six options on it. 

“i feel like we could just get it all,” lara hums, and yoonchae breathes out a laugh. 

the air is warm, spiced, and she tries to settle into the stiff wooden chair. her water glass is sweating. it would make a good picture for her photography class if she had her camera on her. her fingers twitch towards her phone before she catches herself. 

“sophia won’t let me take the leftovers into the house,” she says. 

lara fixes her with a look, one brow arched. “of course she would. she’s all fake strict like that, but it would make her happy to see a few takeout containers in the fridge. helps her to know you’re not totally lost to the sad, sad world of college athletics.”

for a production and sound design major, lara is awfully prone to waxing modern poetic.

“i’m not totally lost to the sad—to the world of college athletics,” yoonchae protests, reaching across the table to pluck the menu from lara’s hands even though she’d decided what she wanted the second they walked in the door. 

“how’s the five year plan coming along?” lara asks, and yoonchae feels the mild sting of betrayal. 

she didn’t tell lara about that. she told only told sophia. which, in retrospect, probably means that dani found out. and manon. who almost definitely told lara. and, if she’s unlucky as she thinks she is, megan will have found out by the end of the day. she might even get a text from megan while she and lara are eating. 

hey. what’re you up to in five years? do you think you’ll still like matcha?

she will probably still like matcha, but she’s pretty sure she can’t put that on her planning document. 

“it’s not,” she admits, dropping the menu to the table defeatedly. 

“why not?” 

she likes lara’s directness. there’s never any guessing with her.

“i don’t have a five year plan,” she groans. 

lara gives their order to the waiter and yoonchae’s not sure how lara knew what she wanted without having consulted her. 

she doesn’t ask, because maybe lara has a five year plan and that’s how she knows all these kinds of things that yoonchae doesn’t yet. like orders and how to breathe before your at-bat and what gets megan to calm down after a rough game. 

“i’m sure that’s why they gave you the assignment then,” lara muses, smiling over the rim of her water glass. “so you can come up with one.”

yoonchae’s hand twitches towards her phone again. she could call her dad. he’d have an idea for a five year plan. graduate, hit the minor leagues, and make it big! 

she’s never really envisioned herself playing baseball past college. every adult she talks to who played baseball in college tells her the same thing: aw, i coulda made it big if it wasn’t for the injury. how are your knees doing so far? good luck getting out of your chair without help when you’re my age. 

then they laugh and slap at her shoulder like her future is some kind of joke, and yoonchae walks away wondering if she really should buy knee savers like megan is always telling her to. 

“i don’t want to keep playing baseball.” it comes out as a whisper, skating just under the low hum of restaurant activity. 

lara leans closer. “sorry?”

“i said maybe i’ll just keep playing baseball.”

it earns her another arched brow, perfectly manicured, and she ducks behind her water glass, pretending to take a sip. 

“you could,” lara acquiesces, because she might know things, but she’s also nice, and a good friend. she doesn’t make yoonchae feel like squirming out of her seat like some of the other older girls on the team. “it’s your future, yoonchae. you can do whatever you want with it.”

her sneakers, which are team-issued like practically everything else she owns, are beginning to fall apart from the soles up. 

dani tells her the gear is kind of cheap, sometimes. three season old models from brands that mass produce their goods somewhere else so they don’t have to deal with anything except import costs and hawking fake quality to teenagers and suburbanites. 

yoonchae’s geographical analysis class might be getting to her a little bit. 

either way. dani tells her it’s because the shoes aren’t very good, which might be true, but yoonchae has also run them into the ground over the past few weeks. or, really, run them into the endless conveyer belt off the university treadmills. 

she’d much prefer to run hamster wheel circles on their indoor track, but then the soles of her shoes would go a rusty red, and she’d have to explain to sophia she’s been spending her nights running instead of studying in the library like she’s been claiming to. 

she sort of likes watching the little red mileage number tick upwards, anyway. it feels more like progress than watching her gear get increasingly dirtier and feeling her knees start to click when she gets up in the morning. 

the best part, the thing that keeps her going back for more, hungry for miles and incline and a persistent ache in her calves, is that by the time she’s done, her brain is usually too fuzzy to form particularly coherent thoughts. 

she doesn’t have to think about five years or pink hair or why her chest protector has begun to choke her whenever she slips it on. 

the directionless going is more comforting than the old, familiar thud of a ball against her palm. it used to soothe her, to feel pitch after pitch snap neatly into the pocket of her glove. now it just makes her anxious. 

she’s constantly reframing. for megan. for her dad. for herself, worst of all. 

there’s, maybe, only so much her knees can take. 

she ends up in the library with megan for the third time in one week, which would be a coincidence if those were at all planned and intentional. 

“fuck,” megan groans, hunching over her laptop. she rubs at her eyes with one hand. “this is killing me.”

yoonchae leans over despite herself, resting her cheek on the scratchy fabric of megan’s sweater as she squints at her computer screen. the brightness is all the way up. tiny black text backed by a glaring white expanse stares back at her, and she feels the beginnings of an ache between her own eyes. 

“you’re going to go blind,” she informs megan, tapping at the brightness button. “put it on night mode.”

“i need the contrast,” megan sighs, but she obeys anyway, leaning back in her chair as the screen hues orange. “i’m dyslexic.”

megan has a habit of casually dropping these kinds of things into conversation, and yoonchae’s begun to stop trying to predict the next thing out of the pitcher’s mouth. 

“that’s reading, right?”

“a lack of the ability to,” megan scoffs, closing her eyes. 

she looks, very suddenly, so exhausted that yoonchae has to stop herself from reaching out. 

which is odd. her first instinct is never to touch. she’s better with words. or reassuring silences. 

“we can take a break,” she offers instead. 

megan heaves another sigh, non-committal, and shifts so she can drop her head down against yoonchae’s shoulder. she doesn’t move away, not even when yoonchae leans back towards her own computer, so she keeps scrolling through the research paper she’s been reading with a new, warm weight nestled by her neck. 

she gets through sixteen pages before megan picks her head back up again. 

yoonchae scrolls, and squints, and tries to pretend she doesn’t feel restless without megan there, and then doesn’t say anything when megan slumps forward onto the table instead. 

she can’t quite keep herself from squirming in her seat a little. reframing. just in case megan moves closer again. 

just in case. 

instead of calling her like her mom and sister do, yoonchae’s dad sends her emails. she has to swipe three times on her trackpad to reach the bottom, and she puts one night a week aside to catch up on family happenings. 

it’s nice, really, to be kept in the loop. it’s nice until she gets to the end of the email and the strings of questions about baseball and school and baseball again start popping up. 

then she has to type up a few paragraphs exaggerating how amazing everything is going. she doesn’t have to lie about doing well, because she is, but the claims trickle slowly. backspace eleven. retype. 

i’m performing well. coaches are happy with me. 

she doesn't mention megan, or her aching knees, or five year plans. 

it’s three a.m. in korea when she sends it. 

the thought almost makes her sleepy enough to crawl into bed. 

“were you and dani always close?”

she stands behind the upright net and watches sophia toss baseballs back into a sturdy white bucket. she should really give the older girl a hand. 

“i mean, not always like we are now,” sophia shrugs. “we had to get to know each other first.”

she walks the bucket back to yoonchae, who takes her turn gathering up the balls that have landed behind the net. between them, the pitching machine whirs insistently. yoonchae forgot to switch it off. sophia jabs at the switch on her way back to the plate, and picks her bat back up to take a few practice swings. 

technically, it’s yoonchae’s turn at the plate, but she doesn’t stay anything when sophia takes her stance in the box again. 

sophia’s batting has been rough lately. most of the time, she strikes out. when she can get the bat to the ball though, it’s almost a guaranteed run. 

she flips the machine back on funnels a ball through, watching as sophia whiffs horrendously. 

“and once you got to know each other, you were just, like, good?” 

she tells herself she’s just trying to keep sophia from getting fed up with herself. she’s not poking around for information—advice, really—about any bespectacled pitchers, or anything. 

“i mean,” sophia grunts as she swings too hard at the next ball. “yeah, pretty much.”

“stop dropping your back shoulder.”

yoonchae drops another ball into the machine and watches as sophia adjusts. the tip of her bat connects with the edge of the ball and it pings off into the fence. contact is contact is contact, her dad always says. 

“manon and i kinda hated each other for a while, though,” sophia admits as she sets up for the next pitch. 

yoonchae fumbles the next ball in her disbelief. her nails scrape at the dirt when she scrambles to pick it back up again. 

“really?” 

the idea of their first and third basemen ever hating each other is, like. some kind of stronger word for crazy that yoonchae hasn’t learned yet.

“yeah. i felt like she wasn’t working hard enough during conditioning, and she thought i was too—you know—” she waves a hand in front of her helmet. 

sophia has a color coded chore wheel hanging from their pantry in the apartment. she makes yoonchae help her deep clean the bathroom every two weeks. her shoes are lined up by the door in order of formality. so, yeah. yoonchae’s pretty sure she knows what sophia means.

“how did you get over it?”

the older girl’s cheeks flush, bright enough to be seen through the bars of her batting helmet, and she calls for yoonchae to drop another ball in the machine instead of answering. 

yoonchae’s not great at letting things go, but this one, well. 

she can let this one go. 

and she definitely doesn't think about what that all—pink cheeks, shuffling feet, sophia flustered for once—could’ve meant on their way back to the apartment, and whether or not she should take it as advice. 

probably not. 

certainly not. 

ending practice with iron in her mouth and a cut weeping blood on her chin is one of the few things yoonchae hasn’t been preparing for. 

she’s been preparing for asking her dad about ideas for a five year plan, and for some kind of awkward, mounting explosion between her and megan (she keeps wearing the white shirt to dinner and watching megan’s gaze flicker when she sees it), and for her knees to spontaneously and humiliatingly give out in the middle of a really important, potentially game-deciding play. 

instead, she’s hunched awkwardly over a blue bag that she thinks is meant to hold vomit as grant dabs gauze at her chin and exchanges worried looks with son and sohey over her shoulder. at her side, sophia keeps murmuring it’s okay, you’re alright, and glaring at grant every time yoonchae’s body twitches in pain. 

she can see megan out of the corner of her eye, hand still clapped over her mouth, as lara and manon take turns murmuring at her like they might to a stray cat. 

the stricken expression on megan’s face when her pitch bounced up from the dirt and knocked yoonchae’s helmet clean off her skull is something yoonchae thinks she won’t be able to forget when she tries. 

“this might need stitches,” grant finally says, and yoonchae feels the ache in her left knee spike. “she bit her lip too. i’ll need to take a closer look to make sure it didn’t pierce through.”

usually, the clinical talk like she isn’t even there wouldn’t really bother yoonchae, but today, it kind of makes everything seem a whole lot taller and brighter. 

sophia squeezes her hand tighter, and there’s something that might be a sob echoing from the other end of the dugout. 

as far as rough practices go, yoonchae’s not even sure this is the worst one. it was shaping up to be a pretty average not-so-great practice. one where her throws keep sailing an inch over megan’s glove and her knees just won’t cooperate on her blocking and all of megan’s pitches land somewhere different and wrong. 

“every bad practice i have seems to go great for you,” megan had grumbled one time as they packed up their gear. she nudged at yoonchae’s shoulder a little too hard to be entirely friendly. “sohey just loves you.”

she remembers not saying anything, grasping for the right words that felt just out of reach, and getting a glare in response.

not that it matters who was having a bad practice. every good practice for yoonchae seems to incur bad for megan. and then it’s bad for them both, except megan is the one who gets blamed, because she’s the one throwing the pitches. and, sometimes, she throws them a little harder and further off-center than strictly necessary. 

yoonchae doesn’t blame her for it. they all have their things. 

but her chin really does hurt something fierce and she’s starting to feel a little sick from all the blood that keeps running down the back of her throat and she hasn’t cried since she got here, but she’s feeling the pressure build behind her eyes like this might be it. 

“i want to go home,” she tells sophia, and it comes out kind of awkward and garbled and uncontrolled. all things that yoonchae wishes desperately not to be. grant hushes her and presses gauze against her chin again. it stings. 

“i know,” sophia nods, and her eyes are shining a little too. megan is crying in the corner still. yoonchae kind of wishes she would leave. or come over here and sit beside her. she’s not sure, entirely. “soon, okay?” 

what yoonchae was trying to say was: i want my mom. 

she has to settle for sophia’s arm around her waist as grant leads them inside the athletics building and through the dim, dank hallways to his office. 

“i might need to send you to the medical center,” he warns them, and by the looks of the trainer’s office, he’s not exactly prepared to stick a needle into the thin skin of yoonchae’s chin. “but i’ll call ahead so they know, okay?”

okay?

yoonchae’s not sure where megan went. she tries to look behind her to see if maybe there’s pink whipping down the hallway, but sophia’s hand stops her, and she feels the dam behind her eyes give way. 

“okay,” sophia murmurs, kind and perfect and not pink. “it’s okay. we’ll be okay.”

she strokes a hand through yoonchae’s hair and hums and lets yoonchae put her head on her shoulder, even though she’ll definitely get blood stains on her practice shirt that won’t come out in their own washing machine. 

the entire lower half of her face is throbbing by the time she’s being shuffled into the backseat of son’s car, sophia on one side and dani on the other, and she thinks, maybe, she catches a glimpse of pink in the window of the building as they pull away from the curb. 

“megan—” she tries, but her teeth catch on her bleeding lower lip and she has to stop. 

“she didn’t mean to,” dani defends, which doesn’t match up at all with what yoonchae was trying to say. “things like this just happen sometimes.”

she ends up with a line of four tiny stitches plus two more awkward ones in her lip where she’d managed to bite through, and doesn’t include any of this in her weekly email to her dad. 

her sister asks why she’s talking funny over the phone, because she calls just barely four hours after they get home from the medical center, and yoonchae’s still wearing her dirt-stained practice uniform—there’s still blood all over it and sophia’s—and she can never really bring herself to decline a phone call from her family.

“i’m chewing gum,” she lies, and listens as her sister talks about their cat’s most recent vet appointment while sophia hovers anxiously. 

the second she gets off the phone, her roommate descends, taking yoonchae’s face gently between her palms. 

“you wanna talk about it?”

sophia’s a little more discerning than yoonchae’s probably given her credit for. 

“can i have my phone? i want to text megan.”

“be nice,” sophia warns as she hands it over, and maybe she’s not quite that discerning. “i’m going to make something lukewarm and smooth for dinner. doctor’s orders. and you need to shower.”

yoonchae types as she walks to her bedroom, one hand out in front of her because she’s a little sore to the idea of bumping face-first into a doorframe right now.

[yoonchae!] Are you okay?

[yoonchae!] You were crying 

she leaves her phone face down on her bed as she goes to shower, which is a slow and awkward and unexpectedly painful process, and when she’s mostly dry and mostly dressed, she turns her phone over to a flurry of missed messages. there’s ones from lara, and dani, and manon. she swipes them away until she reaches megan meiyok. 

[megan meiyok] im so fuckinf sorry yoonchae

and there’s nothing else. 

yoonchae double exclamation point reacts to her own message. 

[yoonchae!] It’s okay 

[yoonchae!] I’m okay

megan heart reacts to the second one and yoonchae watches the three bubbled typing animation for so long that sophia calls her for dinner before any messages pop up in its stead. 

she leaves the phone behind as she pads down the hallway, and tries not to cry again when sophia reaches out to pull her into a hug the second she sees her.

it proves sort of successful. 

it’s quiet, if nothing else. 

when yoonchae was in middle school and practicing sliding drills for the first time, she slid right into her dad’s bare calf with her shiny new metal-spiked cleats. 

her mom still brings it up and blames it on her dad. he was in the wrong position. he shouldn’t have bought yoonchae spikes so early. he shouldn’t have been wearing shorts. yoonchae should’ve been taught when to stop sliding before she was taught when to start.

the ordeal, because it was one, left him with an inches long scar along his leg. one trip to the emergency room for stitches, one trip to their family doctor to have them removed. both times, yoonchae went along and cried guiltily whenever she caught the flash of a needle or the pull of pain in her dad’s brow. 

“걱정하지 마세요,” he insisted, endless. “아프지 않아.”

she remembers asking how. 

how could something like that not hurt? 

he squeezed her hand and smiled, tipping up the brim of her cap. he managed to always be brighter than the medical-grade fluorescent lighting. 

“내가 널 사랑하니까.”

at ten, she’d thought it a rotten explanation. 

yoonchae’s starting to wonder if she might understand it now. 

she sends megan a song and tells her not to be sad. she doesn’t get anything in response for days. it hurts more than her chin and her lip combined. 

sophia keeps trying to offer tylenol because she thinks the tears are about the stitches. 

yoonchae can’t even bury her face in her pillow like she normally would, and she takes up a new penchant for sliding her hands over her eyes like megan does when she has a tough game. 

“it’s here if you want, then,” sophia whispers. 

glass on the nightstand, pill bottle rattling right after. 

she’s been taking tylenol for her knees for weeks. 

the weird part: they don’t really ache all that badly any more. 

so, it’s not five years, but she makes a three week plan. 

get better, play baseball. megan?

she jokes to lara that two thirds of it could end up on a five year plan, and doesn’t specify which two. she thinks lara probably already knows, anyway.

her advisor sends her an email that goes unanswered for days. she swaps out her team backpack for a plain black canvas bag that pulls uncomfortably at the muscles in her shoulders. she spends practices working batting drills with sohey or running bases with manon. 

from the mound, megan fires pitch after pitch at dani and doesn’t look at yoonchae once. most of the balls end up in the dirt, or thudding against the blackboard loudly. 

son doesn’t scold dani for blocking poorly or not moving quick enough. he stalks up to the mound and talks to megan, quiet, for a long, long time. 

yoonchae watches from the fence and tries to read their lips. 

“can we talk?”

she surprises herself with it, really. she’s been waiting on megan, like always. waiting on the windup, ready for the pitch. except, this time, the pitch never came, so now yoonchae’s just been squatting in the dirt for days like an idiot.

megan does a whole body flinch at the words, but she pulls her head out of her locker to appraise yoonchae. she looks wrecked. yoonchae wonders if she’s been doing her reading for class on full brightness again. in the classes they share, she’s been watching pink bob through the door and down to the front of the lecture hall. 

“i have homework,” megan tries, weak, and crumbles the second yoonchae’s expression starts to fall. “okay. i can do it later. let’s—yeah. okay.”

they end up on the locker room bench. 

yoonchae lets her knees bump against megan’s. between them, megan’s glove sits weighty like an accusation. she tries not to look at it, or the spot grooved into the leather where megan digs her thumbnail when she gets anxious on the mound.

she’s too focused on not staring that she doesn’t even see megan’s hand as it ghosts up by her face, warmth brushing brief against her jaw, just missing the tiny line of stitches on her chin. 

“does it hurt?”

megan’s hand falls against her own knee, but their proximity means that the tips of her fingers brush against yoonchae’s knee too. it reminds her of their now-dormant ache. 

“not so much,” she shrugs.

the sigh megan lets out is world weary and screwball-twisting. 

“i’ve been talking to lara,” she starts, and yoonchae thinks me too. “i don’t—i haven’t been fair. to you. this season.” 

it’s awkward stops and pauses, and yoonchae appreciates this more than endless pitches hurled carelessly at her chest. it means trying. 

she keeps quiet, waiting. 

megan is looking at some point over her left shoulder. it takes everything in her not to turn around and search for whatever it is that’s captured the pitcher's eyes. 

“you’re so good, you know? and it’s like you don’t even care. you move like—like you’re hoping someone will see it and go not good enough, so you have a reason to stop. but they’ll never say that, you know? you’re just—you’re a natural.” 

the words should land like a slap across the face, but none of it feels all that sudden. yoonchae’s knee twinges and megan’s palm smoothes across it, a temperate balm. 

“and i try so hard. and it never seems to matter, in the end, because i hit batters and walk them too and you keep ending up having to tie up the ends. and now—”

megan cuts herself off, and yoonchae looks up to see eyes trained on her chin. the stitches in her lip are supposed to dissolve on their own soon. she’ll have a tiny scar. her smile might be a little crooked forever. 

“now i have to pitch to dani. and it’s my own fault. and that sucks.”

yoonchae can’t help the laugh that escapes, and megan’s face draws up defensively before collapsing again, and she’s smiling softly in a way that doesn’t make her look like her cleats are tied too tight. 

“sorry,” she gasps, “sorry. it’s just—dani’s not that bad.”

“she’s not you,” megan murmurs, raw, and well, that shuts yoonchae right up. 

“i’m still your catcher,” she says after a pause a few seconds too long—slow on the uptake, slow to the punch—and she grabs for megan’s hand on her knee. their fingers mash together awkwardly, but megan’s shoulders droop forward, so she doesn’t let go. “i’ll be back soon.”

“it’s not fair to you, though,” whispers megan. “having to catch for me. you don’t even like it.”

what yoonchae wants to say to that is: but i like you. 

she's gotten pretty good at suppressing her natural instinct. 

she doesn’t flinch away from baseballs fired at her face anymore, for one. 

“i want to do it,” she says instead. “i don’t want to watch someone else do it. it’s my job.”

emails from her dad aside, she’d sooner throw her arm out than leave megan alone and aimless on the field. they always leave the dugout at the same time. like clockwork, she waits until megan’s already taken four steps away from the rubber to leave her spot behind the plate.

megan’s free hand keeps opening and closing in her lap, like she might be able to grasp the right words out of thin air.

she doesn’t come up with anything, in the end. 

she leans over and wraps her arms around yoonchae’s shoulders, head falling into the crook of her neck. their knees press together when yoonchae squeezes back, and it doesn’t ache at all, and now yoonchae knows what megan’s hair smells like. which is nice. 

locker room chats aren't any kind of panacea.

when yoonchae straps her catching gear back on for the first time in weeks, her hands shake a little, totally involuntary. it’s not megan that helps her with the buckles. sophia swoops in before the pitcher can get there, but: megan doesn’t turn and run. she sits and watches, swallowing down any protest at being knocked aside. 

then, she walks onto the field beside yoonchae and her first few warmup pitches have almost no heat. 

“more, skiendel,” sohey calls from behind the fence, and megan, for once, listens. 

her hair whips and yoonchae’s heart leaps and the ball sinks neatly into the pocket of her glove. minimal framing required. 

so that’s new. and nice. she can imagine vanilla and cinnamon whenever megan’s hair arcs through the air like that now. 

“you’re staring,” lara murmurs during a water break, and yoonchae just shrugs. 

“i made a three week plan,” she informs her friend. lara’s teasing smile takes a genuine turn and she tilts her head. “i did it. mostly.”

“you ready for a five year one yet?”

she’s starting to think it might end up pretty identical to her three week plan, no matter what she wants. her dad replied to her last email with a series of links to summer programs. in california. not home. 

“we’ll see,” she shrugs, tearing her eyes away from the arc of megan’s spine. “ask me again in a week.”

sophia almost doesn’t let megan into the apartment, which is just barely remedied by the box of homemade cookies megan brandishes the second the door swings open. 

“did you see her scar yet?” she asks the pitcher as she watches megan toe her shoes off, and yoonchae glares, half-hearted. 

she knows sophia is testing megan, in her own way, nudging at the sore spots to see if it’ll make megan snap. 

it doesn’t.

“i brought this, actually,” megan says sheepishly, pulling a small purple tube out of her hoodie pocket. “scar cream. only if you want! not that i think you need it. it’s kinda badass.”

yoonchae snorts and holds out a hand. “thanks.”

megan drops her free hand into yoonchae’s, using the other to slide the tube of scar cream into her sweatpant pocket. sophia’s brows creep up a little higher, and yoonchae has to turn away before her roommate can catch the flush on her cheeks. 

“my room. homework,” she tosses over her shoulder as she tugs megan along with her, and she just knows she’s going to get an earful about this from dani later. 

she shuts the door behind them so they won’t have to hear whatever pointedly unsubtle conversation sophia is about to have over the phone, and megan sort of freezes once she’s all the way inside yoonchae’s room. 

“don’t get weird,” yoonchae scolds gently, slumping into her desk chair. “i need your help.”

“oh, please,” megan scoffs, shaking her head a little. she drops onto the end of yoonchae’s bed, legs akimbo. “school is your thing. everything is your thing.”

it doesn’t come with nearly as punch as it once might have. it actually sounds a little admiring, which makes something in yoonchae’s chest warm pleasantly. she makes a mental note to ask lara what the hell she and megan have been talking about lately, and if she’s considered switching to be a psych major yet.

“it’s not for school,” she corrects. “it’s for life.” 

she doesn’t say it, but megan is good at life stuff. like setting up autopay for her rent and making restaurant reservations and getting herself home for the holidays without any help. 

her document contains one short line of text, copied directly from the torn sheet of notebook paper she was scribbling on at three in the morning a few weeks ago. 

get better, play baseball.

she may have omitted something. 

megan’s brow softens. 

“you want to keep playing baseball?”

yoonchae shrugs, glances out the window instead of looking at megan’s face any longer. 

“i don’t really know what else there is.” 

the corner of megan’s mouth twitches and she types something into the document. it goes on for longer than yoonchae expected, and she gets up to try sneaking a look. all she manages to catch is the cursor landing over the little red x button, and the document disappears in favor of the youtube video she’d been watching that morning. 

“look at it later,” megan hums. 

wildly unhelpful. 

yoonchae’s having trouble getting herself to care about that part. 

they watch a movie, instead. nothing about baseball. megan picks, and sets up anxiously against yoonchae’s headboard. she doesn’t relax until yoonchae lets her head drop onto her shoulder, and her arms don’t uncross until yoonchae reaches up to wipe at her own eyes halfway through the movie. 

“you could do anything,” megan says, then, measured like she’d been practicing in her head. “even that.”

on screen, a woman directs her camera at a raucous crowd and click, click, clicks. 

yoonchae’s walls are plastered with photographs taken by other people. boring shots of buildings, wild stills of birds in flight, colorful, monotone. 

“i like you,” megan murmurs, and yoonchae bites down on her still-tender lip, “as my catcher. but you could be a million other things, too.”

later, when megan is gone and the apartment is back to its usual too-quiet stillness, yoonchae opens the five year document again. she has another email from her advisor sitting heavy in her inbox. 

megan’s left her original “plan” untouched. 

get better, play baseball. 

beneath it, half underlined by misspelling red and improper grammar blue: 

learn to fly. ride a roller coaster. ace biology 101. ask megan on a date. hit a home run. graduate with honors. say hi to your mom for me. ask dad about why baseball. buy a camera or even better ask megan for a camera for your birthday when is your birthday yoonchae? text it to me. 

she reads it and rereads it. saves a copy of the document. 

her hands shake a little when she reaches for her phone. 

[yoonchae!] December 6th

[yoonchae!] I know a good Thai place downtown. Have dinner with me tomorrow?

hysterical, she almost wonders if she should ask megan to have hot dogs and peanuts at the concession stand by the field instead. 

[megan meiyok] yes please 

[megan meiyok] five years doesn’t need to be scary 

yoonchae knows this already. she is, as lara is always reminding her, wise beyond her years. 

that doesn’t mean it doesn’t help to hear. especially not when it comes from pink-haired pitchers with something to prove. 

too many words rise to her fingertips. she doesn’t know which ones to choose. 

she settles for a time, and a song link, for old times sake, or whatever. 

something ridiculous and cheesy and maybe too soon, but she kind of feels like she’s known megan for decades instead of semesters, and megan typed her own name into a document meant to help yoonchae map out her future. 

she sets out her thrifted white shirt for tomorrow right beside her practice uniform, and her knees don’t even crack when she kneels down to get it out of the drawer. 

so, progress. in a way

in her way. 

“you okay, catch?”

she could say yes for real now.